Well-tended lawns and the sound of leaf blowers have a lot to do with California's immigrant roots, and not just ones that stretch south into Latin America. The history of garden work in California stretches further back to the state's striving Japanese immigrant community.

The Muslim population of Iceland, made up of immigrants, foreign students and a few homegrown converts, is small but growing. And the community may soon be getting its first custom-built mosque with land donated by the city of Reykjavik, but not without objections from a vocal minority.

Holi is a Hindu festival in northern India that celebrates the coming of spring on the lunar calendar. Celebrants spray each other with colors. It can get pretty raucous. Indian-American writer Deepak Singh remembers Holi as a kid in Lucknow, and thinks about what it would be like to celebrate at his current home, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Radio producer Betto Arcos isn't used to being on the other side of the microphone. But when a Mexican filmmaker chose Arcos to be a subject in a documentary on successful Mexicans in the United States, how could he refuse?

The US citizenship has an amazingly high pass rate — but it also has a number of critics. They argue the questions, frankly, are bad. And the test doesn't encourage immigrants to become better citizens, but rather to memorize facts they can write on the test.

Demand for medical care will grow. One possible solution would be to allow more foreign-trained doctors to work in the US. Many are ready to practice but the US system for residency keeps them out of the running. Marina Giovannelli of WLRN-Miami has more.

Hiking was never fun for Van Pol when he was a child: It brought back fearful memories of his family's escape from Cambodia and into refugee camps. It wasn't until a high school field trip to a New Hampshire peak that hiking became Van's salvation.

A court ruling in the Dominican Republic means thousands of Dominicans of Haitian descent are losing their citizenship — some of whom can trace their roots in the Dominican Republic as far back as 1929.

The Tsarnaevs trained at the mixed martial arts gym under reporter Andrea Crossan's home. And, it turns out, that some of the best fighters in MMA come from the Caucasus region that also produced the Tsarnaevs.

Turbaned and proud. That's Vishavjit Singh who responded to the hate directed at him after 9/11 by drawing political cartoons about being Sikh in America. Then he got really bold and dressed up as Captain America and took to the streets of New York City.

Along with gaining the right to vote and the responsibility of serving on a jury, some studies show new citizens make clear economic gains as well. But not everyone buys it. Naturalization rates in the US are extremely low. Of the more than 8 million people with a US green card, less than 40 percent will go on to naturalize. That's nearly a third of the naturalization rate in our neighbor to the north, Canada.

Updated

02/06/2015 - 10:45am

How does picking the tomato compare to the onion? And what about strawberries? One Mexican American migrant farmworker who lives in California's Central Valley took us to the produce aisle to tell us what he sees when he's at the supermarket.

The holidays are closing in, and next year is sure to bring battles over the budget and the debt ceiling. So some immigration advocates are ramping up the pressure on a few Republican members of the House before the issue gets drowned out by other Washington politics.

An online photo album is casting new light on a forgotten episode in Hawaii's history, when US authorities imported 1,500 Russians to work on sugar plantations. Most of the migrants never made it past the language and cultural barrier, but the story of how they came to Hawaii says plenty about American attitudes to race and language.

Market Basket, the New England grocery chain, is a staple in immigrant communities. Not only do they shop there, they work there, too. But after a power struggle at the top of the company, customers and employees worry this could be the end.

A Buddhist statue was meant to simply ward off trash and graffiti on a rough Oakland corner. But it became a community gathering place for the area's Vietnamese immigrants, who turned the site into a beautiful shrine.

The US wine industry is rich with immigrant stories. And there are the elders among them, including winemaker Miljenko “Mike” Grgich. He turned 90 this year and his story is one that traces the modern history of American wine.

Updated

11/20/2014 - 11:00pm

The president announced Thursday night that he will expand programs to allow undocumented immigrants to temporarily work and live legally in US, which is welcome news for those who qualify. But do President Obama's actions go too far — or not far enough?